


A year of stories

by writtelings (some_nights)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:03:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9534986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/some_nights/pseuds/writtelings
Summary: Every other month, I will write a short story. Here is where I post them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is dedicated to [@unicornsrulez](http://unicornsrulez.tumblr.com/) ♥️️  
> I am glad that we met (even though we never actually did meet, but you know what I mean)

Kiali had counted on a slow night. It was in-between moons and a Tuesday, both circumstances that statistically lead to fewer people being cursed, by accident or not. On top of that, there was this important test she forgot to study for, so a slow night would come in handy.  
She was alone in the call center, Mila had caught the flu and, foolishly, Kiali had insisted that she didn’t need any extra help on a Tuesday in between moons.  
And so far, not a single person had called. Which was great, really. It gave Kiali enough time to check the log for all the callers today, to make herself a tea, to get set up and to look at her class notes for almost one hour without really reading anything. Those notes were as useless as the class they were for. “Celtic magic”. Who even needed that? No one used runes and stone circles anymore! Except maybe a few government agencies. So it was a required class. With an exam “as difficult as catching sunlight”, as her friend Norac had put it. And he’d know, since it was his third time taking the class.  
Kiali shook her head. She had to concentrate. Her notes showed just how bored she had been. They were full of doodles, song lyrics, spells and ideas for her experimental magic essay. She loved experimental magic and magical theory. She was not very good at the practical part, sadly. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t lead to a big scientific breakthrough in the field! Maybe that’s what the scientific field of magic needed: Someone like her, who was less interested in practicing magic and more in all there was to learn about it. Where did it come from, why were some species – and within the species some people – more likely to be able to cast spells than others? Was it genetic? As much as magic was a part of the daily life, there was still so much that wasn’t known. And Kiali intended to lessen the amount of “unknown” significantly. But for that she had to pass her celtic magic exam.  
Again, she tried to focus, when the phone rang. Kiali saw it as the universe’s way of letting her off the hook.  
“Good evening, you have reached the St. John curse helpline, my name is Kiali, how may I help you?”  
Kiali smiled, even though the caller couldn’t see her. There was barking at the other end of the line.  
“Hello?”, a shaky voice asked.  
“Yes, hello. Kiali here. How may I help you?”  
“I… I think I turned my mom into a dog.”  
“Don’t worry, I will help you”, Kiali said in her most calming voice. She’d have to mark this case on the bitch-board. “I will ask you a few questions, if that is okay.”  
The caller made some sounds of agreement.  
“Firstly, can you give me your name, species and preferred pronouns? You do not have to, of course and you can use a psydomyn, but it would be helpful.”  
“My name is… Call me Jay. I’m human, I think, and, uhm, pronouns, I don’t really care, but ‘she’ is okay.”  
Kiali nodded.  
“Wonderful. Jay, would you like to tell me what happened?”  
She did. With a lot of sobs and stutters, Jay told Kiali about a fight she’d had with her mom about that girl she was seeing. She was a vampire, but she’d only been turned recently and was about Jay’s age. (Kiali asked herself how old Jay was, but she didn’t ask the girl. It was not relevant to the curse. Probably.) Jay’s mother did not like her daughter seeing a vampire, especially on school-nights. So she’d prohibited Jay from going on her date.  
“I don’t even know what happened, I was just… I was just so angry and then I just. I just started screaming awful, hurtful things at her and then I felt this power inside me, I’ve never felt something like that before, and then I said...”  
Jay was crying now.  
Kiali tried to calm her down: “Jay. Listen to me. It is going to be okay. You are going to get your mother back.”  
“But… I was so mean to her. What if she never forgives me?”  
Kiali smiled.  
“Trust me. We’ve had some cases like yours. And your mom will just be glad she’s not a dog anymore.”  
For a while, Jay didn’t say anything. Then she asked: “Are you sure?”  
She sounded less scared now. She seemed to have calmed down.  
So Kiali did something her father could not do: She lied.  
“Yes, I am sure. And I am half fae, so I can’t lie!”  
That was a lie. Yes, Kiali was half fae, but her fae genes were pretty recessive. Sure, she was good with plants and animals. And she had gotten some of the typical fae beauty, including clean skin for a life time apart from some freckles. But the typicall fae grace had not been passed down to her and her magical abilities were equal to those of a simple pepple. And she could lie. But if it helped calm Jay down, a little lie didn’t hurt.  
“How do I get her back then?”, Jay asked, almost hesitantly.  
“What exactly happened to turn her into a dog?”  
“I’m not really sure, I… I said the b-word. To my mother! And then she looked at me and wanted to say something, but she barked instead and then she grew fur and her legs… Oh, it was so horrible!”  
Jay started to cry again. Kiali felt bad for her, she really did. It must be quite traumatizing to watch your own mother turn into a dog, especially if you didn’t know you had magic abilities.  
“Jay, listen to me. Your mom will be okay. You have just had your first outburst of magic. Because you are a very inexperienced, I would not recommend that you try to turn her back. Just wait. In a few hours, she should be back to normal. If not, call again, okay?”  
“So there is nothing I can do?”, Jay asked, almost hysterical.  
“Is there someone you can call to keep you company? Someone to help you through this?”  
“There is no one, that’s why I called you!”  
“Calm down, Jay. It is going to be okay.”  
“No, it’s not! I just turned my mom into a dog! My mom! A dog! I did that! I! My whole life, I’ve wished to show some kind of magic ability and I’ve just accepted not having any and now this?! My mom is a dog! And there is nothing I can do about that! And you say it’s going to be okay!”  
Jay was definitely hysterical now.  
“Jay. Your mother will forgive you. And being a witch changes basically nothing. You can still go to the same school, have the same friends. You will just have to take a few extra classes, that’s all. You are gonna be fine. I promise.”  
This time, it wasn’t a lie.  
It was quiet for a moment. Then Jay almost whispered: “Thank you.”  
“No problem, that’s what we are for.”  
It was not, actually. They were there for helping with curses, not with a teenager meltdown. But Kiali was happy to help.  
“Is it okay if I hang up now? Your mother should turn back into her old form in no time, there will be no lasting side-effects. Do something that relaxes you, okay Jay?”  
“Okay”, Jay said.  
Kiali smiled.  
“Wonderful. And if something is wrong, just call again.”  
“I will. I think I will watch a movie with mom. She… she has also calmed down a little and is now licking my hand.” Jay giggled a little. “I think she doesn’t want me to cry anymore. And I think you were right. She’s not mad.”  
“I’m glad to hear that. Good night, Jay.”  
“Good night.”  
And with that, the call ended. Kiali filled out the log and made a mark on the bitch-board. It was the fifth bitch-related incident this month and it was only the third day!  
Kiali laughed when she remembered the man who’d called his boss “bitch” under his breath just to see her run around as a dog. She bet he’d been fired. Sometimes Kiali wished she could check in on the callers. That was not part of the job, though. Her job was to help people with any kind of curse problem. And she loved that job.  
She also loved college and to pass that, she’d have to pass the celtic exam tomorrow. Kiali groaned. She really hated rune magic. But the universe seemed to be on her side, because the phone rang again.

“Good evening, you have reached the St. John curse helpli-”  
But before Kiali could finish her sentence, the caller groaned: “Can’t. Stop. Turning.”  
Then there was a scream. Heavy breathing.  
Kiali waited. Nothing.  
“Are you still there?”, she asked.  
A growl.  
“I will take that as a yes.”  
Kiali did not really know what to do. There was no protocol for callers who couldn’t talk.  
“Would you like to use our text line for speech impaired citizens in need of help?”  
Again, growling. It was a different kind of growl and Kiali didn’t know what it was supposed to mean.  
“If I should take that as a no, growl once shortly.”  
The caller did as asked. Wonderful. She had a caller who couldn’t stop turning, couldn’t speak when turned and refused to use the text line. So much for a slow night. First order of buisness, determining the species. There weren’t that many turning species and even fewer of them growled.  
“Are you a werewolf?”  
The caller let out a short growl and Kiali decided to take that as a yes.  
One question solved. She hopes. She could feel her fingers drumming her pencil furiously against her notepad.  
“Full moon isn’t for another two weeks”, she said, more to herself than to her caller.  
The growl from the other end of the line was drawn out. Kiali could imagine that meant “I know”.  
“Do you know who is responsible?”  
No response, pained huffs, groaning. Then strained voice said: “I don’t know.”  
The caller was back to human then. Kiali had to take the chance to ask as many questions as she could before they turned again.  
“Please run me through your last week.”  
Most curses didn’t have a long period between being cast and taking effect, except for family curses of course. But this seemed more like an accident than anything else.  
The caller hesitated for a moment, so Kiali said: “I here to help you. But I can only do that of you cooperate with me, okay?”  
The caller drew a deep breath and said: “I was mostly at home. I’ve been… sick the last few months and am still not fully recovered. And before you ask… it has nothing to do with this curse. I only left the house for church, groceries and for... HGHN!”  
Kiali furrowed her brows. Neither grocery store nor church were likely curse places, especially for a werewolf. Now she had to guess what else there was to do for a werewolf who only seemed to leave the house if absolutely necessary.  
“Are you alright?”, she asked after the pained grunting and growling had stopped.  
They growled, but let out a little whimper afterwards. That was definitely a clear no.  
“I don’t think you’ve been cursed at church or at the grocery store. So now we have to figure out where else you went and if you’ve been cursed there.”  
A growl.  
“Did you do anything else outside your house beside the third activity?”  
The caller let out a kind of barking sound.  
“Was that a no?”  
Another growl. So growl meant yes, bark meant no.  
“Were you alone?”  
Growling.  
“So you didn’t meet up with someone?”  
The sharp barking sound again.  
How in seven buttons had they been cursed? The tip of Kiali’s pencil broke. Of course.  
Think, Kiali, think.  
What did her werewolf usually do?  
They lived their student lives, went to classes, parties et cetera. Save for the moon days of course. Many of them decided to take a medication that prevented the turning, but there was still excrutiating pain involved.  
Medication. That was it!  
“Were you at the pharmacy?”  
The werewolf whined.  
“Am I on the right track with the medicine?”  
Kiali had never been so happy to hear a growl.  
“Good. Very good. But you didn’t go to the pharmacy?”  
A bark.  
No pharmacy. Kiali frowned. There weren’t many options for a werewolf to get their medicine. They could either get it from the pharmacy or from the black market, but that involved personal communication and the caller seemed to avoid those. They’d also said that they hadn’t met up with anyone. So no black market then.  
But were there any other possibilities?  
A small whine interrupted Kiali’s thought process.  
“I am still here. Just thinking. Would you prefer for me to voice my thoughts?”  
They affirmed with a growl.  
“I know you didn’t go to the pharmacy and I know you didn’t go to the black market, because then you would have met up with somebody. You also didn’t have the medicine delivered to your house, because you left it. I just don’t know how you could leave the house for medicine without meeting up with someone. Ah!”  
The caller yelped at Kiali’s sudden exclamation.  
“I’m sorry”, Kiali said with a small laugh. “But I just figured it out! You wanted to make your own medicine! You are probably allergic to some ingredient in the mainstream one and you don’t want to resolve to the black market, because you never know what’s in those potions. So you decided to make your own!”  
Kiali barely waited for the growl before carrying on: “You went out to get the ingredients, I think most are quite easy to come by, you can find many in the grocery store as far as I know. But the key ingredient, aconitum, is a little more tricky. It’s heavily regulated and any plants that are found in the wild are either protected by a rune circle or just destroyed. You probably went to pick it up anyway. I think there was a recent plant discovered in the park. Some jerk probably changed the runes or the formation, that’s why you got past the circle. And that’s why you can’t stop changing.”  
Rune magic. Of course. Kiali pulled a grimace. Well, learning by doing.  
“You are probably right.”  
“Oh, you are back to your human form!”, Kiali said.  
“Mhm”  
They sounded exhausted.  
“It’s your lucky day, you have a rune magic expert at your hand!”, she said cheerily.  
It was a little exaggerated, but the caller didn’t have to know that.  
The caller huffed out a laugh.  
“If you can, try to eat something or drink a glass of water. You are probably famished and dehydrated from all the changing. I will go and get a pen and when I come back, I will figure it out, okay?”  
“Okay.”  
They didn’t sound convinced. They barely sounded anything but exhausted.  
Kiali searched her bag for another pencil. She hoped she had at least one that wasn’t broken. She should really start using pens. Way more resilient.  
“Okay, I’m back”, she said after she’d found a pencil by dropping her bag’s content on the floor.  
A long growl was the answer.  
“If I get this right, this will be your last involuntary transformation. I promise.”  
She should really stop making promises so lightly.  
Kiali gathered her celtic magic class notes. Protective stone circles were one of the examples they had to study. The state always used the same runes in them. Algiz for protection, ihwaz for defence, markstav hagalaz for a warning of danger and reversed algiz for driving wanderers away. None of these runes lead to a werewolf turning uncontrollably, even if Kiali took the reverse and converse meaning into account.  
“I will talk you through what I am doing so you know I am still here, okay?”  
The werewolf growled.  
“I know which runes are used in a protective circle, but none of these runes would lead to you turning. And none of them can easily be changed.”  
Kiali thumbed through her textbook and looked at her rune tables.  
“Except… except if there was a mistake. You know, officially the state only uses anglo-saxon runes, but there are tons of code violations, because some people just prefer to use elder runes. It’s not much of a difference, really, only that the elder hagalaz can easily be changed into an anglo-saxon dagaz! That means the circle is useless and it explains the turning.”  
The caller yelped excitedly and Kiali smiled. One problem solved.  
But another one arose.  
“Do you happen to know rune magic?”  
Silence.  
“Are you still there?”  
An affirmative growl.  
“The problem is, rune magic can only be reversed through rune magic. Either you could do the ritual yourself or one of us could call the authorities.”  
The werewolf barked. A loud and clear no.  
“No authorities then. We could wait until you turn into your human form again and then I could try to guide you through the ritual?”  
They agreed.  
“Good. While you’re still in your wolf form, I think it wouldn’t hurt to check if you even have all the required stuff. You need nine stones, rune stones would be perfect, but any kind of stones will do.”  
Kiali could hear rummaging at the other end of the line. She waited until the caller let out a small growl.  
“You found stones?”  
Another growl.  
“Rune stones?”  
Kiali could not believe her luck when the caller growled. This could actually work.  
“Wonderful! Now we will look for the runes you need for the ritual. Do you know the runes when I say their name?”  
Now the caller barked. A small setback, but one that could be worked around.  
“No problem. I will tell you how they look like and you put them aside in two separate piles. But be careful not to put them into a circle! First, you need the rune that looks like an x between two sticks.”  
Kiali waited until she heard the caller growl, then she continued.  
They had selected the seventh stones when they turned again.  
“I’m back”, they said.  
“I’m glad to hear that. The last two runes you need are the one that looks a little like pi, that greek letter. 3.41, circle, that pi.”  
“3.14”, the caller said.  
“What?”  
“Pi is 3.14. And I found that rune. It’s much easier to grab these stones with human hands.”  
“That makes sense. Now, you also need the x and the p. Then we have all the stones.”  
“Are you really a rune expert?”  
“Is now really the time to ask?”  
“Probably true. I found the stones. What now?”  
“Do you have a space big enough to comfortably sit and make a circle of nine stones around you?”  
They huffed. “Yes.”  
The “obviously” was implied. Of course. Turning into a werewolf required space. Being in wolf form required space. More space than a human sitting in a stone circle.  
Kiali overplayed her mishap by simply carrying on: “Good. Now sit with the two piles in front of you. Put your phone on the other side of the piles so it isn’t in the circle.”  
She just now realised what a huge responsibility she had. If she fucked up now, she could make it way worse for the werewolf. But if she didn’t help, they would be stuck turning for who knew how long and Kiali wasn’t sure how long they could still take it. She took a deep breath and told herself to concentrate.  
“I’m sitting.”  
“Take the x between sticks rune stone and place it in front of you, but sideways. Not standing, but lying down.”  
She talked the caller calmly through the ritual and hoped her nerves didn’t sound through the phone.  
“Now as last rune, the fork.”  
“What happens if this goes wrong?”  
Kiali was for a second tempted to lie. But she said truthfully: “It could get way worse. And a lot harder to reverse.”  
The caller said nothing for a while.  
Then they drew a deep breath and said: “I’m now placing the last stone.”  
Kiali didn’t know what to respond to that so she stayed silent.  
The silence stretched on. The only sounds Kiali could make out were the ticking of the office clock and the breath of the caller.  
Then, after an eternity of three minutes, they said: “I think it worked.”  
Kiali couldn’t restrain her squeal of excitement.  
“Thank the holy seelie queens!”  
“No”, said the caller. “Thank you.”  
And without anything further, they hung up.

Even though there were no more callers after that, Kiali didn’t study. She wanted to, but whenever she looked at the runes now, all she could thing about was her werewolf caller. She hoped they were well. She hoped they would be well. Kiali realised that she didn’t even know their name.  
Over the course of the night, Kiali also thought back to Jay. She hoped everything went okay, that the mother turned back and wasn’t too angry, that Jay would get the support she needed. And that she’d have a happy ending with her vampire girlfriend.  
Kiali loved getting those small peaks into a stranger’s life, but sometimes she regreted that she would never hear from them again. If she passed them on the street, she would not recognise them. Most of them would probably forget her soon or remember her only as “the lady from the call center”. Still, Kiali hoped that at least some thought back once in a while to Kiali, the girl who had helped them in a difficult time. Maybe some even asked themselves who she was beyond the voice on the phone. But they will never know. And if they passed her on the street, they wouldn’t even recognise her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> As I am doing this project to better my writing skills any kind of feedback would be greatly appreciated!  
> You can also visit my [tumblr](http://writtelings.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Addendum from January 2018: I obviously didn't write as much as I wanted, but I will keep this project in the back of my mind and one day, there will be six short stories here.


End file.
